The present disclosure relates to a printer and a printing system, which print a glossy color image on a print body using metal ink, and a method of manufacturing a card including a glossy color image printed using metal ink.
As a printer that prints an image on a card, a retransfer device is widely used, which sublimates or fuses ink of an ink ribbon with a thermal head, and transfers the ink to form an image on an intermediate transfer film. The printer again transfers and prints the transferred image onto a card. Japanese Patent No. 4337582 (Patent Document 1) describes such a retransfer device.
In the retransfer device, the ink ribbon includes ink layers of four colors, including yellow (Y), magenta (M), cyan (c), and black (BK), for example. The ink of each ink layer is sequentially transferred and superimposed on the intermediate transfer film to form a non-glossy color image. The formed non-glossy color image is again transferred and printed on a card, so that the color image is formed onto the card.
There is another commonly used technique to form a glossy color image on the surface of a card, by using an ink ribbon including an ink layer of metal ink showing metallic gloss instead of the black ink layer, or as an ink layer of the fifth color to perform the same transfer and retransfer printing as described in Patent Document 1. The metal ink is usually referred to as silver ink.
The technique to forma glossy color image is described in Japanese Patent No. 3373714 (Patent Document 2).
Hereinafter, such non-glossy and glossy color images formed on a card are also referred to as formed images.